How Silly is Climate Change Denial?

[mike]

Actually i am right on both counts its only a matter of scale, that you dont get that is understandable.
Your intellectual capacity is "small" you therefore cant think in the scale necessary to understand.

 

[Gene Steinberg]

OK, OK, no more comments about one's intellectual capacity. Let's focus on the issues, OK?

 

[mike]

Negative Aspects of Slash and Burn
Many critics claim that slash and burn agriculture contributes to a number of reoccurring problems specific to the environment. They include:

• Deforestation: When practiced by large populations, or when fields are not given sufficient time for vegetation to grow back, there is a temporary or permanent loss of forest cover.
• Erosion: When fields are slashed, burned, and cultivated next to each other in rapid succession, roots and temporary water storages are lost and unable to prevent nutrients from leaving the area permanently.
• Nutrient Loss: For the same reasons, fields may gradually lose the fertility they once had. The result may be desertification, a situation in which land is infertile and unable to support growth of any kind.
• Biodiversity Loss: When plots of land area cleared, the various plants and animals that lived there are swept away. If a particular area is the only one that holds a particular species, slashing and burning could result in extinction for that species. Because slash and burn agriculture is often practiced in tropical regions where biodiversity is extremely high, endangerment and extinction may be magnified.

The negative aspects above are interconnected, and when one happens, typically another happens also. These issues may come about because of irresponsible practices of slash and burn agriculture by a large amount of people

Why should we lose biodiversity, why should unique species be lost to extinction, just so a population of 7 soon to be 9 billion humans, can grow even larger ?

Why would you replace 100 different books with 100 copies of the naked chef ?. Its still 100 books, but in the BIG picture its a loss of information

 

[mike]

Humans will probably be extinct within the next 100 years due to overpopulation, environmental destruction and climate change.

Fenner, who is emeritus professor of microbiology at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, said homo sapiens will not be able to survive the population explosion and “unbridled consumption,” and will become extinct, perhaps within a century, along with many other species. United Nations official figures from last year estimate the human population is 6.8 billion, and is predicted to pass seven billion next year.
Fenner told The Australian he tries not to express his pessimism because people are trying to do something, but keep putting it off. He said he believes the situation is irreversible, and it is too late because the effects we have had on Earth since industrialization (a period now known to scientists unofficially as the Anthropocene) rivals any effects of ice ages or comet impacts.


“We’ll undergo the same fate as the people on Easter Island,” he said. More people means fewer resources, and Fenner predicts “there will be a lot more wars over food.”
Easter Island is famous for its massive stone statues. Polynesian people settled there, in what was then a pristine tropical island, around the middle of the first millennium AD. The population grew slowly at first and then exploded. As the population grew the forests were wiped out and all the tree animals became extinct, both with devastating consequences. After about 1600 the civilization began to collapse, and had virtually disappeared by the mid-19th century. Evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond said the parallels between what happened on Easter Island and what is occurring today on the planet as a whole are “chillingly obvious.”

Eminent Scientist Claims Humans Will Be Extinct In 100 Years

Easter island is a good example, who can doubt that with our present technology the earth too is an island, one in the sea, the other in space. The only difference is scale

To not recognise this is the real fail

 

[BoyintheMachine]

Mike, get your own thread. Start your own thread on overpopulation or whatever you want. This thread is discussing AGW.

 

[mike]

Mike, get your own thread. Start your own thread on overpopulation or whatever you want. This thread is discussing AGW.

Thats for Gene to suggest not you.

But ive provided link after link after link that ties AGW to overpopulation,

overpopulation is cause of climate change - Bing

Its not just relevant to the discussion, its the primary cause

You simply cannot have a proper discussion about climate change without including overpopulation

 

[Gene Steinberg]

I will accept the possibility that one is related to the other and will leave the thread intact. My forum, my playground, my rules.

 

[mike]

A Stanford professor and author of The Population Bomb recently published a paper in a scientific journal re-emphasizing climate change and population growth pose existential threats to humanity and in an interview with Raw Story said that giving people the right to have as many children as they want is “a bad idea.”
“The only criticism we’ve had on the paper is that it’s too optimistic,” said Paul Ehrlich, Bing professor of population studies at Stanford University and president of the Center for Conservation Biology. “You can’t negotiate with nature.”
The study, published the Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal earlier this month says that climate change is “driven by overpopulation, overconsumption of natural resources and the use of unnecessarily environmentally damaging technologies and socio-economic-political arrangements to service Homo sapiens‘ aggregate consumption.”

‘Population Bomb’ scientist: ‘Nobody’ has the right to ‘as many children as they want’

 

[mike]

Some of the world’s top scientists sent a message to world leaders this week: address human overpopulation and consumption or risk “potentially catastrophic implications for human well-being.” The urging came from the world’s 105 scientific academies, ahead of the United Nations’ Rio +20 summit on sustainable development that began on Wednesday.

The message is clear: with 7 billion people now crowding onto our planet, the animals and plants we depend on to keep our world livable have fewer places to raise their young, less food to eat and water to drink, more pesticides to suffer, more polluted air to breathe. Wildlife extinction rates are 1,000 times higher than normal background levels, and human population growth is playing a key role in driving that catastrophe. It’s time for overpopulation to be part of the conversation about the future of our planet

Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/top-scientists-to-world-leaders-do-something-about-overpopulation.html#ixzz32P5gi9kr

 

[BoyintheMachine]

How To Debunk Mike In One Sentence:

Nobody can determine how many people is too many people.

The end. Case closed. Everything Mike has posted involves people making up their own numbers and variables and then merely proclaiming them to be correct. Just like with AGW, they create charts, graphs, and computer models that require variables they invent and control. If they make a mistake their conclusions are false. If they are dishonest their conclusions are false. All of it relies on human honesty and accuracy.

Need I remind people that Mike is the one that believes that the U.S. is consuming one planet's worth of resources every year, yet amazingly the earth is still green and I am still posting here and you are now reading this reply. I still don't understand how Mike can't see the absurdity of that claim.

 

[mike]

Again you miss the point of that statement.

Modern humans have been on Earth for 200 centuries. True sustainability means providing every person now alive, as well as generations yet to come, with a reasonable standard of living that can be maintained into the foreseeable future.

Today humanity uses the resources of the equivalent of 1.5 Earths. This means it now takes the Earth one year and six months to regenerate what we use in a year.

Consumption « Population Matters

You have a small view of a much larger system, a simplistic view of a much more complex issue

Whats absurd, is to make sweeping claims that world renowened scientists and scientific bodys are just "making it up"

The statement was released by a group representing the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and similar institutions around the world, including those of South Africa, Japan, Nicaragua, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. “We are delighted that the world’s science academies have chosen to come together to highlight two of the most profound challenges to humanity — population and consumption — and to call for urgent and coordinated international action to address them,” one of the group’s leaders said.
The message follows a study released this spring by the London-based Royal Society that population and consumption by rich countries present “profound” challenges to economies and the environment. It also included several recommendations, including support for voluntary family planning.
But you don’t have to be a member of a scientific academy to have your say about overpopulation. One of the best days to speak out is coming up soon on World Population Day, July 11. Write a letter to your local newspaper, start up a conversation at the coffee shop,or the paracast forum.


Read more: http://www.care2.com/causes/top-scientists-to-world-leaders-do-something-about-overpopulation.html#ixzz32PA1cXtE

No one has to "make up" some of the very obvious results of human population and over consumption of resources. they are there for all to see,

Then, beginning in the 1920s, Western states began divvying up the Colorado’s water, building dams and diverting the flow hundreds of miles, to Los Angeles, San Diego, Phoenix and other fast-growing cities. The river now serves 30 million people in seven U.S. states and Mexico, with 70 percent or more of its water siphoned off to irrigate 3.5 million acres of cropland.


at the lake’s edge they can see lines in the rock walls, distinct as bathtub rings, showing the water level far lower than it once was—some 130 feet lower, as it happens, since 2000. Water resource officials say some of the reservoirs fed by the river will never be full again.

The Colorado River Runs Dry | Science | Smithsonian

The camera doesnt lie, and the cause of this that you can see with your own eyes is as stated in the article........fast growing cities

The article goes on to state

“There’s not enough fresh water to handle nine billion people at current consumption levels,” says Patricia Mulroy, a board member of the Colorado-based Water Research Foundation

There is nothing made up about it.

 

[BoyintheMachine]

Again you miss the point of that statement.

Modern humans have been on Earth for 200 centuries. True sustainability means providing every person now alive, as well as generations yet to come, with a reasonable standard of living that can be maintained into the foreseeable future.

Today humanity uses the resources of the equivalent of 1.5 Earths. This means it now takes the Earth one year and six months to regenerate what we use in a year.

Consumption « Population Matters

You have a small view of a much larger system, a simplistic view of a much more complex issue

Nobody can determine how may people is too many people. You know this is true. You know, just like with AGW, that your basic premise can not stand because it has no feet. Just like CO2 has never driven climate in the past and doesn't drive climate today, you can not tell me how many people is too many people.

What Mike also doesn't seem to be aware of is that our farming methods have improved to the point where we are producing more food on far less land that we have ever done in the past. With time, as our technology grows, so does our productivity. The earth's resources, as a whole, are not running out. We currently produce far more than enough food to feed the planet. Certain rare minerals may be exhausted but as a whole we are nowhere near any level to justify the outright paranoia and fear mongering that is shown by various individuals who push this.

 

[Tyger]

There's only only slight problem. You see, the earth's average global temperature hasn't risen in 17 years now. The last time the earth's average global temperature warmed was in 1997. We are currently in a cooling trend that some scientists believe may last another 40 years. This cooling trend was not predicted by AGW. However, believers in AGW were quick to announce that this cooling trend "proves" AGW after all! Of course, we who are opposed to AGW would remind people that we were in a similar cooling trend from 1940-1975, when man's CO2 output from industrialization was growing. Yet amazingly the earth did not warm. Just as we have been trying to tell you, CO2 is not associated with global warming. The very premise of AGW falls apart and can't withstand this inconvenient fact.

You have betrayed where you are getting your information (Fox News) - and that you are not reading links. That's your choice - but means you are not really interested in getting new information. (I do notice that you make numerous statements of 'categoric fact' - yet give no evidence in support of what you are saying.) Some of what you are saying is simply not supported by the facts - as in the case of warming over the last 30 years (which includes the last 15 years).

In the link discussing the out-right lying Fox news is engaging in regarding Climate Change, the year 1997 and the claim of 15 (17) years of no warming is directly spoken to: "On September 30 of last year (2013), Gutfeld (of Fox News) accused the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of obfuscation saying the 'experts pondered hiding the news that the earth hadn’t . . . warmed in 15 years, despite an increase in emissions. They concluded that the missing heat was trapped in the ocean.' To the contrary, IPCC scientists publicly discussed the “relationship between surface temperature trends, heat trapped in the ocean, and the flow of heat throughout the planet as the climate warms."

"Fox News downplays climate change by looking at tiny snippets of recent time. Krauthammer has outright denied increasing temperatures on our planet: “temperatures have been flat for 16 years.” Rich Lowry similarly stated that the earth hasn’t warmed in 15 years, as did Gutfeld. However, the IPCC has found, with science, a correlation between increase carbon dioxide emissions and increased temperatures over the 250 years."

"The thought-process among Fox News hosts is completely backwards. Instead of letting scientific findings influence their stance on policy, they are letting their ideology influence, or skew, science. This make no sense. As the UCS aptly stated, “the most productive step that Fox could take to improve the accuracy of its coverage of climate science would be for hosts and guests to differentiate between scientific facts about climate change and political opinions about climate policy.” "


Many of your points are old canards long since unravelled. We know where the disinformation is coming from (Fox News is a big offender) and who we are having to deal with (Koch brothers et al). It is a powerful status-quo that does not want their flow of wealth impeded - do not wish to be accountable to the rest of us for what they do, what they destroy.

Industry vs. Environment: The Battle over Climate Change
LINK: Industry vs. Environment: The Battle over Climate Change - Ring Of Fire Radio: Robert Kennedy Jr, Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder

Text:

• The Carbon Disclosure Project represents 722 investors and a total of $87 trillion in assets, about one-third of the world’s invested capital, calling for companies to disclose their carbon emissions and climate change strategies. The CDP holds the largest collection of climate change and environmental information on companies and aims to use it to reduce companies’ impacts on the environment.

• Right-wing media outlets such as Fox News and Rush Limbaugh decrease trust in scientists, thereby decreasing the trust in science and climate change. According to Skeptical Science, a study on conservative media outlets and global warming denial finds five main methods that outlets use to create distrust in scientists, including: 1) “presenting contrarian scientists as ‘objective’ experts while presenting mainstream scientists as self-interested or biased,” 2) “denigrating scientific institutions and peer-reviewed journals,” 3) equating peer-reviewed research with a politically liberal opinion,” 4) “accusing climate scientists of manipulating data to fund research projects,” and 5) “characterizing climate science as a religion.”

• The US Chamber of Commerce, a powerful business lobbying group that represents mega-corporations, fights climate change legislation and opposes federal efforts to regulate CO2 emissions. In 2009, the Chamber spent over $65 million actively campaigning against climate change legislation. It has taken a lead role in challenging EPA attempts to regulate greenhouse gases and continues to cast doubt on climate change science, Environment360 reports.

• Republican politicians, some on the Environment and Public Works Committee and other government environmental boards, continue to fight climate change legislation and EPA efforts. In April, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) claimed that Al Gore, the United Nations, MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, and George Soros are responsible for creating the climate change “hoax.” Politicians are often backed by industry contributions.

• Conservative think tanks and institutes fund climate change denial, spread misinformation, and incite tensions. Two trusts, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund were created by ideologue billionaires like the Koch Brothers and Richard Mellon Scaife to fund over 100 anti-climate groups working to discredit the science behind climate change. One recipient of Donors Trust funds, the Heartland Institute, is notorious for spreading climate change science denial by targeting children by attempting to integrate anti-climate science materials into schools.

 

[mike]

The earth's resources, as a whole, are not running out.

ROFL, now whos making things up ?

Today is Earth Overshoot Day. Happy Earth Overshoot Day! Except, well, we don't much feel like celebrating.
That's because Earth Overshoot Day is the day each year when we've consumed natural resources at a rate beyond which our planet can replenish, and have produced more waste than can be reabsorbed, according to the Global Footprint Network, a think tank based in the US, Switzerland, and Belgium.

The cause for our unsustainable consumption is multi-pronged. We have a growing population (now at more than 7.1 billion, and according to the World Popular Clock, the net gain is one person every 13 seconds) with growing demands for products and services that create more waste, and use more resources. At our current rate of global consumption and waste production, the level of resources required to support us is about 1.5 Earths. The Global Footprint Network says we are on track to needing two Earths before we reach the middle of the century.

Today, according to the Global Footprint Network, more than 80 percent of the world's population lives in countries that use more than their ecosystems can renew.

Good Job, Humanity: As Of Today We Are Consuming More Than Earth Can Replenish This Year | Science | Australian Popular Science


Once a population starts doing this

Consuming natural resources at a rate beyond which our planet can replenish, and have produced more waste than can be reabsorbed

Its too big, thats just common sense.............

 

[BoyintheMachine]

You have betrayed where you are getting your information (Fox News) - and that you are not reading links. That's your choice - but means you are not really interested in getting new information. (I do notice that you make numerous statements of 'categoric fact' - yet give no evidence in support of what you are saying.) Some of what you are saying is simply not supported by the facts - as in the case of warming over the last 30 years (which includes the last 15 years).

In the link discussing the out-right lying Fox news is engaging in regarding Climate Change, the year 1997 and the claim of 15 (17) years of no warming is directly spoken to: "On September 30 of last year (2013), Gutfeld (of Fox News) accused the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of obfuscation saying the 'experts pondered hiding the news that the earth hadn’t . . . warmed in 15 years, despite an increase in emissions. They concluded that the missing heat was trapped in the ocean.' To the contrary, IPCC scientists publicly discussed the “relationship between surface temperature trends, heat trapped in the ocean, and the flow of heat throughout the planet as the climate warms."

"Fox News downplays climate change by looking at tiny snippets of recent time. Krauthammer has outright denied increasing temperatures on our planet: “temperatures have been flat for 16 years.” Rich Lowry similarly stated that the earth hasn’t warmed in 15 years, as did Gutfeld. However, the IPCC has found, with science, a correlation between increase carbon dioxide emissions and increased temperatures over the 250 years."

"The thought-process among Fox News hosts is completely backwards. Instead of letting scientific findings influence their stance on policy, they are letting their ideology influence, or skew, science. This make no sense. As the UCS aptly stated, “the most productive step that Fox could take to improve the accuracy of its coverage of climate science would be for hosts and guests to differentiate between scientific facts about climate change and political opinions about climate policy.” "


Many of your point are old canards long since unravelled. We know where the disinformation is coming from (Fox News is a big offender) and who we are having to deal with (Koch brothers et al). It is a powerful status-quo that does not want their flow of wealth impeded - do not wish to be accountable to the rest of us for what they do, what they destroy.

Industry vs. Environment: The Battle over Climate Change
LINK: Industry vs. Environment: The Battle over Climate Change - Ring Of Fire Radio: Robert Kennedy Jr, Mike Papantonio and Sam Seder

Text:

• The Carbon Disclosure Project represents 722 investors and a total of $87 trillion in assets, about one-third of the world’s invested capital, calling for companies to disclose their carbon emissions and climate change strategies. The CDP holds the largest collection of climate change and environmental information on companies and aims to use it to reduce companies’ impacts on the environment.

• Right-wing media outlets such as Fox News and Rush Limbaugh decrease trust in scientists, thereby decreasing the trust in science and climate change. According to Skeptical Science, a study on conservative media outlets and global warming denial finds five main methods that outlets use to create distrust in scientists, including: 1) “presenting contrarian scientists as ‘objective’ experts while presenting mainstream scientists as self-interested or biased,” 2) “denigrating scientific institutions and peer-reviewed journals,” 3) equating peer-reviewed research with a politically liberal opinion,” 4) “accusing climate scientists of manipulating data to fund research projects,” and 5) “characterizing climate science as a religion.”

• The US Chamber of Commerce, a powerful business lobbying group that represents mega-corporations, fights climate change legislation and opposes federal efforts to regulate CO2 emissions. In 2009, the Chamber spent over $65 million actively campaigning against climate change legislation. It has taken a lead role in challenging EPA attempts to regulate greenhouse gases and continues to cast doubt on climate change science, Environment360 reports.

• Republican politicians, some on the Environment and Public Works Committee and other government environmental boards, continue to fight climate change legislation and EPA efforts. In April, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) claimed that Al Gore, the United Nations, MoveOn.org, Michael Moore, and George Soros are responsible for creating the climate change “hoax.” Politicians are often backed by industry contributions.

• Conservative think tanks and institutes fund climate change denial, spread misinformation, and incite tensions. Two trusts, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund were created by ideologue billionaires like the Koch Brothers and Richard Mellon Scaife to fund over 100 anti-climate groups working to discredit the science behind climate change. One recipient of Donors Trust funds, the Heartland Institute, is notorious for spreading climate change science denial by targeting children by attempting to integrate anti-climate science materials into schools.

Nope. Didn't get my info from FOX and it has nothing to do with what political party one favors. The earth is now in a cooling period that began after 1997. This cooling period was not predicted by AGW proponents. However, they now claim that it actually does prove AGW! LOL

Unfortunately, many, many AGW proponents haven't got the memo that the earth's average global temperature hasn't increased since 1997 and hence is why they still proclaim that the earth is getting warmer each year.

For the record, I'm not implying that this cooling period will last or that we won't enter another warming period. I'm just merely stating what we now know, that the earth entered a cooling trend after 1997. Some scientists predict that it could last another 40 years. Some Russian scientists are saying it may last up to 250 years but I don't know about that.

 

[mike]

This simple minded "we cant use more than one planet, cause we only have one planet duh" falicy is again explained in detail here

In 8 Months, Humanity Exhausts Earth's Budget for the Year

August 20 is Earth Overshoot Day 2013, marking the date when humanity exhausted nature’s budget for the year. We are now operating in overdraft. For the rest of the year, we will maintain our ecological deficit by drawing down local resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Just as a bank statement tracks income against expenditures, Global Footprint Network measures humanity’s demand for and supply of natural resources and ecological services. And the data is sobering. Global Footprint Network estimates that in approximately eight months, we demand more renewable resources and C02 sequestration than what the planet can provide for an entire year.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/earth_overshoot_day/


The Cost of Ecological Overspending
Throughout most of history, humanity has used nature’s resources to build cities and roads, to provide food and create products, and to absorb our carbon dioxide at a rate that was well within Earth’s budget. But in the mid-1970s, we crossed a critical threshold: Human consumption began outstripping what the planet could reproduce.
According to Global Footprint Network’s calculations, our demand for renewable ecological resources and the services they provide is now equivalent to that of more than 1.5 Earths. The data shows us on track to require the resources of two planets well before mid-century.
The fact that we are using, or “spending,” our natural capital faster than it can replenish is similar to having expenditures that continuously exceed income. In planetary terms, the costs of our ecological overspending are becoming more evident by the day. Climate change—a result of greenhouse gases being emitted faster than they can be absorbed by forests and oceans—is the most obvious and arguably pressing result. But there are others—shrinking forests, species loss, fisheries collapse, higher commodity prices and civil unrest, to name a few. The environmental and economic crises we are experiencing are symptoms of looming catastrophe. Humanity is simply using more than what the planet can provide.

 

[BoyintheMachine]

ROFL, now whos making things up ?



Good Job, Humanity: As Of Today We Are Consuming More Than Earth Can Replenish This Year | Science | Australian Popular Science


Once a population starts doing this

Consuming natural resources at a rate beyond which our planet can replenish, and have produced more waste than can be reabsorbed

Its too big, thats just common sense.............

Consuming natural resources at a rate beyond which our planet can replenish, and have produced more waste than can be reabsorbed

Fail. Sorry, Mike. Overpopulation is defined as the function of the number of people alive on the planet versus available resources. So until you can tell me how many people is too many people then you have nothing to make an argument in favor of the world being overpopulated. I've tried time and again to get you to realize that overpopulation is a myth but you are so dead set on the doom and gloom.

Overpopulation has nothing to do with poverty, hunger, or lack of resources. All of those are separate problems.

 

[mike]

I wish the numbers were just "made up"

i really do

Current extinction rates are at least 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural rates found in the fossil record, the report stated. The data were released as 3,500 delegates gathered in Bangkok, Thailand, for a World Conservation Union conference focused on halting what's deemed an extinction crisis.
The report concluded that humans are the main reason for most species' declines. "Habitat destruction and degradation are the leading threats," the union said in a statement, "but other significant pressures include over-exploitation (for food, pets, and medicine), introduced species, pollution, and disease. Climate change is increasingly recognized as a serious threat."

The union, which is a coalition of leading conservation groups, called the report "the most comprehensive evaluation ever undertaken of the status of the world's biodiversity."

Unprecedented species decline reported - US news - Environment | NBC News

And again, the cause of this obscenity ? Humans

Why should thousands of whole species be wiped out, lost forever. Never to have a chance to evolve to sentience like we did..... Just so we can have more humans

 

[mike]

.

Overpopulation has nothing to do with poverty, hunger, or lack of resources. All of those are separate problems.

Merging climate, food, water, ocean, soil, justice, poverty, and old-growth forest crises – all which are to some degree caused by inequitable overpopulation – are destroying ecosystems and threaten to pull down our one shared biosphere.
Earth has lost 80% of her old-growth forests, 50% of her soil, 90% of the big fish – and many water, land, and ocean ecosystems, as well as atmospheric stability, as human population has soared more than sevenfold

On Overpopulation and Ecosystem Collapse | Scoop News

 

[BoyintheMachine]

I wish the numbers were just "made up"

i really do



Unprecedented species decline reported - US news - Environment | NBC News

And again, the cause of this obscenity ? Humans

Why should thousands of whole species be wiped out, lost forever. Never to have a chance to evolve to sentience like we did..... Just so we can have more humans

LOL....really Mike? You are going to throw in endangered species? There's that kitchen sink behind you. I'm sure you will want to throw it in too.